Dish Network is cutting jobs as the company moves to reduce operational costs and expenses throughout the business. Dish has been restructuring the company since 2020, and this is not the first round of layoffs to have occurred since. Dish has laid off around 3,000 employees in recent years. The total number of the most recent cuts is unknown, but it is reportedly a major round of layoffs, with some employees claiming up to 20% of the staff was cut.
Any Slingboxes still out there are about to get bricked. Dish Network this week emailed reminders to users of Sling Media’s Slingbox — the once-controversial devices that “place-shift” pay TV services by streaming live TV over the internet — that the servers that power Slingboxes will be permanently taken offline on Nov. 9.
Oracle Advertising said it is collaborating with Dish Media to target addressable advertising campaigns reaching Dish TV and Sling TV subscribers. Oracle also said it has created 110 new connected TV-specific audience segments to help marketers reach consumers based on over-the-top streaming viewership and CTV device ownership.
As an added hook for fifth-anniversary promotional offers, Sling TV has had the National Day Calendar declare Feb. 9 “National Cut the Cord Day.” Between Feb. 7 and 11, the virtual MVPD streaming service is offering several special offers for new or returning customers.
Sling TV has stopped offering its Broadcast Extra add-on amid a program licensing dispute with Univision. “We are not currently offering our Broadcast Extra service, which includes ABC, Univision and UniMás, on Sling TV. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this causes with viewing the programming that matters to you,” said a Sling FAQ posted Monday.
Exclusives
For almost two years, Dish Network has offered U.S. consumers a streaming-television service without a traditional cable or satellite subscription — and the company has had the market almost all to itself. Until now. AT&T, which has tied up with Time Warner in a $85 billion mega-deal, is planning to introduce an online offering, DirecTV Now, later this month. A new paid service from Hulu, Google’s YouTube Unplugged and possible offerings from Amazon and maybe even Apple will soon join the fray.
Forget about the cord-nevers Sling TV once avowed was its target. The OTT service has recruited Hollywood tough guy Danny Trejo for a series of ads aimed at cord cutters. The multimedia national ad campaign highlights the “evil” and scary” cable TV companies against its lack of hidden fees and long-term contracts and its cheaper prices. The ads are especially pitched to millennials, who are continually drifting from linear TV (parent company Dish Network lost 304,000 subscribers in the first half of this year).
Dish Network and EchoStar are getting close to the launch of Sling AirTV, a new product that integrates over-the-air broadcast television with Dish’s SlingTV streaming video service, a roundabout way of providing local channels customers have been clamoring for.
